Her first thought was of blood. She had never felt so dirty in her life and she needed blood to get the sickening taste from her mouth. There was no telling how she came to that conclusion; she just needed it so badly that she could barely stop herself.
“I’m hungry,” she whispered, looking at Emerald through her straggling, sweaty hair. There was no missing the black eyes.
“Read?” she whispered, taking a step back. “Is that…”
His hand went to the butt of his gun, a Smith&Wesson M&P 9. Drawing it quickly wasn’t going to be easy, sitting in the booth as he was. “It’s okay,” he announced to the diner. “There’s no reason to get excited. Right, ma’am?”
It was too late not to get excited. Emerald had always worn her waitress uniform scandalously, at least as far as the local blue-hairs were concerned, and she showed a vast expanse of cleavage below her soft throat. Heather stared at the milky-white skin with more of an animal leer than any man who had ever graced the doors of the diner. She could see the blue veins coursing through Emerald’s breasts and it drove the last of her humanity out of her head.
She barred her teeth and, with a scream, she charged.
That extra second was enough for Sheriff Read. He threw himself from the booth as he drew the M&P 9. His aim with the first shot was dead center and holed Heather’s sternum without any outward effect. With all the rumors, he had not expected this to stop her. For this reason, he didn’t let up on the trigger, walking his next two shots up Heather’s plump, diseased body, hitting her in the throat and then in the bridge of the nose.
This last bullet traveled through her sinuses, into her brain and out the top of her head. She fell almost at Read’s feet.
Heather was dead and yet Emerald backed away panting and pulling at her open uniform to haul the collar to her face. “That’s one of them! Look at it!” She pointed and stared in rigid shock for all of a second before she darted for the kitchens, saying, “We gotta get out of here.”
Read grabbed her by the arm. “No,” he ordered. His voice was sharp; however, his insides were tilting in uncertainty. There were two voices balancing within him. The first asked: What if they hadn’t been infected yet? What if they were still clean? What if there was still a chance to escape alive? This was his own voice, the Nicolas Read who liked to kick up his heels far out of his jurisdiction on a Saturday night.
The second voice was the voice of reason and responsibility. It was the voice of his badge. What if they ran out and infected all of Indiana? They were practically in the heart of America.
“No,” he said again, holstering his gun. “We’ll go in the back and put up whatever barriers we can…”
The man at the far end of the diner had stood up, his eyes shifting back and forth from the body to the door. His left hand was held up toward Read, palm up. His right was inching toward his coat pocket. He seemed like something of an inverted man. He was utterly bald and yet wore one of the thickest beards Read had ever seen. His coat was tailored wool, but his pants were ratty, washed-out denim with green stains at the cuffs. They were his lawn-mowing pants.
His name was Lancaster Holmes and normally he was as pretentious as his name, but that morning found Lancaster in a different frame of mind. The one-time frat-boy was on the verge of casting aside all societal restraints.
“I can leave,” he said. “It’s legal. I know my rights.”
“A state of emergency has been declared,” Read told him. “You don’t have rights anymore. So, do yourself a favor and move your hand away from your pocket.”
The hand didn’t move. “I have basic human rights,” Lancaster whispered, and now the hand inched closer, the tips of his fingers slipping inside.
“Stop!” Read dropped his hand to the butt of his gun. “Let’s discuss this in the back where the air is clean. Every second we’re out here, the worse our chances are. Get it? We still have a chance.”
This was the wrong thing to say. Lancaster knew his only chance lay in getting outside as soon as possible. His hand slid easily into his pocket and found the grip of a Walther PPK he had bought after watching the latest James Bond movie. As far as pocket guns went, there were few better. It was compact enough to aim with a twist of his wrist. He had it aimed in his pocket while Read was still ripping his M&P 9 from its holster.
Lancaster fired, hitting Read in the chest; in his bullet resistant vest to be precise. The burning hunk of lead didn’t penetrate the vest, but it did turn him sideways so that Lancaster’s second shot deflected off the vest and buried itself in the booth behind him. By then, Read’s gun was out and his arm extended. Having grown up in the sleepiest of sleepy towns, Read had never been in a shootout before. That didn’t mean he hadn’t prepared. He went to the range weekly, usually in the middle of the week when everyone else was at work, so they wouldn’t see him practicing his quick draw. By his own standards, his draw had been achingly slow; in stark contrast, his aim was perfect, and he drilled Lancaster, knocking him back into his booth.
There was no need for a second shot as Lancaster began to gurgle and cough blood.
“Shit,” Read said. His instinct was to go to the bald man and render what aid he could, but that would mean passing by the body of the woman. Her blood was everywhere, and he knew that he was pressing his luck already. He and Emerald backed away.
She wanted to run, and maybe on any other day she would have, but she was as afraid of Read as she was of getting the disease. She had known him all her life without ever realizing just how hard he really was. He had been shot and then killed the bald man without blinking and she got the feeling he wouldn’t let her go, no matter how many free peeks at her bosom she had given him over the years.
In fact, he was already on the radio, dooming them both. “Mary, it’s Read. Someone needs to contact the governor’s office.” He took a deep breath before he added, “And the CDC. I have identified a positive case of the plague.”
“The real plague?” Erica asked in a whisper.
“Yes. I need all of Elnora on lock down.”
2-8:48 a.m.
The White House, Washington D.C.
Elnora, Indiana was not yet on the radar during the President’s morning security briefing. This was exceedingly lucky as he was mentally on the edge without hearing that the middle of the country had identified a positive case of the plague.
The rumors flying around Columbus and Cincinnati were bad enough and had him glancing at the weak-kneed major who had been stuck carrying the nuclear football that morning.
Matthew Dimalanta, the new Chief of Staff found himself in nearly exactly the same spot as Marty Aleman had been thirteen hours before. The President kept hinting at a nuclear option, while at the same time getting in the middle of and hampering a military solution. Dimalanta was being pulled from every side. FEMA was making outrageous and impossible demands concerning the nationwide refugee problem. DHS was begging for help trying to control borders. The military was pleading with him to distract the President for “just a few hours.”
Then there was the FBI and the CDC, as well as ambassadors from thirty countries.
“And what about the press?” the president asked, interrupting Dimalanta’s internal drowning.
The press was an entirely different story. Their access had been restricted, but did that stop them from wheedling into every situation? Hell, no! They seemed to know everything Dimalanta knew; despite that, they still felt the need to spring out from behind planters or columns to brace him with questions.
“They want to know about the current state of the insurrection.” It was about the only thing they didn’t have all the facts on and they were hungry. “They want to know if there’s going to be actual trials? And if so, will they be televised? They’re hinting that they won’t be legitimate if they’re not.”
“They can hint all they want. You know, Matthew, Marty had it all wrong. The press can only break weak presidents. A strong president owns the press. Yes, that’s the
mind-set I want you to have. We own them. They have to come to us for crumbs and that’s what I want you to give them. Tell them we have all the evidence needed to execute the top three conspirators right now. Tell them that these are military tribunals, not civilian ones. The same rules that govern civilian courts do not apply since there are national security interests at stake.”
He had Dimalanta repeat everything he’d just said back to him, gave him an overly friendly squeeze on the shoulder that caused the young man to wince, and then sent him off.
Yes, the press were his lap dogs and he would jail the first that nipped at his hand. Still, they could be trouble if they were not fed daily. Before the apocalypse the President had found that they were inherently lazy. Marty would have their talking points delivered by midday and these would be swallowed without question and regurgitated all evening long. Many times, they were repeated word for word.
But sometimes, usually when it came to some actual scandal in the opposition party, they would do their jobs and really dig. Watergate was like that. Compared to some of the shenanigans that he knew about, and had been a part of, Watergate had been child’s play. It was the press that had destroyed Nixon, not the facts.
The same could happen to him, and if it did, he wouldn’t be forced to resign. No, he was living by the sword now and if someone came after him, they would have to come with a bigger sword.
“But we won’t let that happen,” he muttered as he headed for the small meeting rooms where the prisoners were being held and interrogated. As he got closer, he shed staffers. He had six or seven in tow; men or women he treated with less consideration than he would a gaggle of servants. Normally, they were eager to carry out his bidding. Now, not one wanted to be anywhere close to the torture rooms.
And that was fine. The President wanted full control over the proceedings and the last thing he needed was someone to start whispering to the press.
As he turned the corner, he almost ran into Trista Price. There were hollows under her blue eyes and her pert lips were drawn back in a grimace. She jerked in surprise and then stood back, and bowed from the shoulders as if she were Japanese. It wasn’t proper etiquette to display to an American president, but since he felt as though he were more of an American emperor, he liked it.
“Just the woman I wanted to see,” he said, throwing an arm around her thin shoulders, and leading her back the way she had come, passing a pair of Secret Service agents whose job it was to restrict access to that little section of the sub-floor. “Do you have confessions for me?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” she answered, this time, bowing from the neck. She held out a small, black rectangle. It was an external hard drive and looked sleek and vaguely evil. He pulled his hand back. Fingerprints were forever, Marty used to say.
He guided her to an empty room and suggested: “Why don’t you just show me what you have?”
She gave him yet another, “Yes, Mr. President,” before setting up a laptop and plugging in the hard drive. “Mister Kazakoff says this is a rough draft. He has to put it through a number of filters, though what these were, he didn’t say.”
The President watched as first Marty Aleman, followed by Generals Haider and Phillips baldly admitted to treason. The camera focused in close on their faces; they were red-eyed and had sallow bags, but were unmarked. In dry voices they each admitted to deliberately disobeying orders and forming a cabal to undermine their Commander in Chief.
“And do you know that the penalty for treason is death?’’ Kazakoff asked each at the end of their interviews. They each answered “Yes.” Phillips and Haider did it with their chins held high. Marty whispered the word as if it were a secret.
“That’s it?”
Trista had no idea how to answer the question. Wasn’t it enough? Didn’t that prove the President had been right to arrest them? Couldn’t she go back to being just an aide? More than anything, she wanted to be in charge of getting the coffee. Haider’s screams were still crawling around inside her mind. “It’s all he gave me,” she answered.
“It’s not. I know it. Where’s the spook? Show me.” He was already at the door heading out. In the hall, he repeated the question and blew past a stiff Secret Service agent with Trista hurrying after. Inside the room he found Kazakoff calmly wiping down stainless-steel instruments as General Haider sat tied to a bloody chair, shivering uncontrollably.
“What’s wrong with him?” the President asked. “Do you still have him hooked up to something?”
Kazakoff gave the general a glance. “No sir. It’s the drugs in his system. They’ll wear off eventually.”
“About that. You’re not quite through here. These confessions,” he said the word with his nose upturned, “only name each other. What about the rest? There’s no way they could have kept their staff members out of the loop. And what about the Joint Chiefs and the different Secretaries? I can guarantee that the Secretary of the Army is in it up to his eyeballs.”
“From what I gather,” Kazakoff answered, “he purposely tried to stay out of the loop. I guess that he caught a whiff of what was going on and made himself scarce.”
The President’s eyes blazed. “I had him arrested, Kazakoff! I had him arrested for a reason…for cause.” He tried to warp his face into a smile; however, it ended up resembling a toad’s smile.
Now Kazakoff understood. The President wanted him to propagate a lie. The torturer had no qualms with that, after all it wasn’t exactly a new concept. “I’ll be most strenuous with the secretary and the others.” David Kazakoff counted himself as a patriot and if a few soft politicians and some malcontents needed to be scapegoated for the war effort, then he was behind it a hundred percent.
Haider had been staring at the two, his head vibrating and shaking as if he were deep in the throes of Parkinson’s disease. “If you expect me to turn on anyone who’s innocent, then you’re a bigger idiot than even I thought. And that’s saying something.”
The President looked down on him with contempt for a moment before turning back to Kazakoff. “We have his confession. You can do whatever you want with his face now.”
Lost in all of this was Trista Price who, for the first time in her life, was happy that she was completely overlooked, standing in the corner of the room with a look of shock on her face.
Chapter 10
1-9:13 a.m.
Quinsigamond River, Massachusetts
The smoke was beginning to drift again, blown by a soft breeze and with a soft hiss. Some people muttered curses while most others whispered prayers. There was a lot of praying going on along the eastern bank of river.
“Please, no more wind,” Troy Ross said under his breath, giving a quick glance up at the swirling grey blanket overhead. He could just make out the sun as a glaring round disk. Someone coughed and was immediately shushed by everyone within earshot. The last attack had nearly shattered the line and no one wanted a repeat of that.
The civilians, especially the recent ones, had been within seconds of breaking and running. Ross had thrown in his reserves and then begged for help. It had come in the form of smoke. He had asked for high explosive shells, but the last of these had been left behind when the forward ammunition supply point had been abandoned during one of the many wild flights the night before.
He had received smoke rounds which had confused the undead to such an extent that the attack had petered out. Since then his soldiers had been setting controlled fires using wet leaves and a grey pall hung over everything. But the wind was now pushing it eastward and soon his line was going to be exposed again.
And they weren’t ready.
Leaving his battalion in the hands of a newly frocked captain he went straight to the division headquarters, in person. Once there, he stood in bewilderment watching the dreadfully inept workings of the new staff. Information and requests flowed sluggishly from one temporary shelter to another and then out to a Humvee and from there a runner was sent up the steps of the Grafton Public Library,
where each matter was hashed out by the next higher-ups.
After a few minutes, if the request could be made by the local divisional PO, an order was given, and it went through the same slow process going back down the chain of command. Frequently there was a backup and delays. When that happened, people just stood around chatting, waiting their turn.
Ross was still gaping in astonishment when an MP asked him what he wanted. “I need smoke, now.” Ross pointed back the way he had come. “I need it along the river from Pullard Road to Millbury Street. If we don’t get it…that’ll be it. We won’t be able to stop them.”
The MP snuck a look over his shoulder before he pointed out an empty table that had a sign which read DIV/ART. “Don’t get caught,” he warned before he turned quickly away and went to inspect some bushes without looking back.
“I’ll just say I didn’t know,” Ross whispered as he went to the table. On it was a sat-phone, as well as a bulky SINCGARS—a Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System. The handset on the radio was a simple push to talk. “Panther 30, this is Able 30. I have a fire mission. I need smoke at the following…”
“Hold on. This is the FDC. What’s your PO order number?”
Ross let out a long, “Uhhhhhh,” as he stared around the table searching for anything that would resemble a PO number, whatever that was. “I am unable to locate that number at the moment, but this is a critical situation. The line is unstable and will fall. I repeat it will fall. I have the coordinates of the fire mission. They are…”
“Able 30, we cannot authorize a fire mission without a PO number from the brigade level or higher. Please stay off the net unless you have such authorization.”
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 13